Is Adelaide the murder capital of the world? / Cit of Evil
Detectives in the "City of Evil" finally knew it for certain: they had a serial killer in their midst.
It was 1979 and four bodies had turned up in a remote stretch of rugged bushland near the town of Truro in the Mount Lofty Ranges, 90km northeast of Adelaide.
At the time, Adelaide was better known as the "City of Churches", but a series of twisted and appalling murders would give it a more sinister reputation, reports news.com.au.
The first body had turned up the year before, on Anzac Day, 1978, when locals from Truro were out mushrooming.
Bill and Valda Thomas found what they thought was the leg bone from a cow in bushland beside Swamp Road outside Truro.
Bodies in the bush: The scrub outside the tiny town of Truro where five of seven girls murdered in a serial killing spree were found. Photo / Channel 9
The remains were identified as those of 18-year-old girl Veronica Knight, who had disappeared from an Adelaide street at Christmas in 1976.
No obvious cause of death led them to believe that Knight may have gone bushwalking in the area, become lost and died of thirst.
The death was deemed not suspicious.
Twelve months later, bushwalkers found more human remains in the same location.
This skeleton was identified as belonging to Sylvia Pittman, 16, who had gone missing around February 1977.
Was this a human burial ground?
A team of police returned to conduct an extensive search in a challenging area where there was no water, no electricity, and no communications.
Eleven days later, they discovered two more skeletons in a paddock on the opposite side of Swamp Road.
Forensic policeman with human arm found with a woman's sandal and other bones at Truro. Photo / News Corp Australia
Detectives came to the conclusion: they had a serial killer and this was his dumping ground.
But other than that, they had very little in the way of clues.
It would be an unsolved murder from 12 months earlier and 80km away that would set them on the path to solving what would become known as the Truro murders.
At 6.40pm on March 1, 1978, a Wednesday, 19-year-old Lina Marciano had left her home at Wayville in Adelaide's inner southern suburbs on her Honda motorcycle.
She drove 10km to Nailsworth Primary School, where she was due to attend a Greek dancing class.
Lina never made the class, nor did she return home.
"A vibrant and enrgetic teenager, Lina was the sort of person who stuck up for people in bad situations or when she thought they were being treated unfairly.
"Her family would later wonder who could have taken advantage of her that night, and how she could have the terrible fate that she did," Lina's sister, Teresa Kellett, told news.com.au.
Charismatic psychopath Christopher Worrell. Photo / News Corp Australia
Four days later, Lina's body was found bound, gagged and wrapped in a brown curtain on a rubbish tip 8km away in the northern Adelaide industrial suburb of Dry Creek.
She had been strangled with a Hot Track Road Racing Set cord, bludgeoned with multiple blows to the head, strangled, stabbed in the heart and had several broken fingers.
Two curtains made from the same material, which was later sourced to manufacturers in West Germany or Belgium, were found amid rubbish at the same dump.
The curtains had blood and fibres on them and a third curtain was located several hundred metres away.
Police examining Lina's body ascertained she had died in a frenzied attack with stab wounds and blows which both would have been fatal.
As now retired detective Allen Arthur told Channel 9's City of Evil series, "it was a horrific scene simply because it was an overkill and she was sort of dumped like trash".
Lina's blue-and-white motorcycle was found in the KFC restaurant carpark opposite Nailsworth school, indicating she had at least arrived for the dancing class.
The 19-year-old loved music. Photo / News Corp Australia
It was a particularly brutal murder, but as the months rolled by in 1978, investigating police came up with few new clues.
By May 1979, the Adelaide media and the public had become obsessed with the four bodies located at Truro.
Police decided to look for links to Lina Marciano's murder and major crime squad boss Ken Thorsen assigned Detective Sergeant Bob Giles to collate missing persons reports.
At that point in time, the files of the missing were on a card system and required methodic and patient sorting.
Bushwalkers found Sylvia Pittman's skeleton a year later. Photo / News Corp Australia
The names belonged to men who had met in prison and shared a prison cell and whose prison release had almost coincided with the start of the serial killing spree.
The body count was now five, but two more names were on the list, and both had disappeared in what was shaping up as a fatal January to February 1977 cluster.
Tania Ruth Kenny was just a 15-year-old and had arrived in Adelaide from her home 80km mouth at Victor Harbour.
She began hitchhiking and was picked up.
On February 12, 1977, Deborah Lamb was hitchhiking on West Terrace in Adelaide's CBD when a vehicle stopped and picked her up.
Neither girl was seen alive again, but their bodies would not be not unearthed at Truro.
On May 24, 1979, police uncovered the body of Juliet Mykyta, "curled up like at cat" in saltbush, and carried her from the Truro site.
Police received a tip off that James William Miller and his jail cell lover Christopher Worrell were connected to the killing. Photo / Supplied
On May 25, 1979, police cadets searching on their hands and knees located Tania Kenny's remains at Dean Rifle Range, Wingfield, just 12km north of the spot from which she had vanished.
Workmen searching with earth-digging equipment would later find Deborah Lamb's remains at Port Gawler beach, 45km north of Adelaide.
All the murder victims had been strangled, although there was a strong suspicion that the last of them, Lamb, had been alive when she was buried.
The men that detectives believed had carried out all seven murders was Christopher Worrell, a charismatic 23-year-old convicted rapist who was both handsome and a psychopath, and James Miller, 40, a burglar and drifter. The pair had entered into a sexual relationship in their prison cell.
Worrell preferred sex with females, and after his prison release, with Miller, went on a spree picking up girls and killing them.
He was convicted of six of the murders, excluding that of Veronica Knight, as part of a joint criminal exercise with Worrell.
Miller continued to plead his innocence, claiming Worrell was the instigator, and died of cancer in Yatala prison in 2008.
Lina Marciano's murder may have led to closure for the victims of the Truro killings, but no solace came to her family.
Juliet Mykyta had her life mapped out. Photo / News Corp Australia
In 1991, a woman who had been working as a cleaner at Nailsworth Primary School at the time Lina vanished contacted police.
The new information did not lead to any arrests.
Ms Marciano's sister, Teresa Kellett, told news.com.au her family remained tortured by not knowing what happened but described her sister as "a gentle soul with a very strong sense of social justice".
"Unfortunately her life ended with no justice being served for a life that was brutally taken away from her," Ms Kellett said.
"You could not be treated more unfairly than she was for no reason at all.
"The police have tried very hard and I can't thank them enough and I hope they don't give up on her case. She was a fighter so my family and I will keep hoping that one day soon the killer will come forward.
"We have missed her so much."
The cold case remains open on SA Police files.
White Valiant in which Truro serial killer Christopher Robin Worrell, died in 1977. Photo / Supplied
